John Sherman

John Sherman (10 May 1823-22 October 1900) was a member of the US House of Representatives (R-OH 13) from 4 March 1855 to 21 March 1861 (succeeding William D. Lindsley and preceding Samuel T. Worcester), a US Senator from 21 March 1861 to 8 March 1877 (succeeding Salmon P. Chase and preceding Stanley Matthews) and from 4 March 1881 to 4 March 1897 (succeeding Allen G. Thurman and preceding Mark Hanna), US Secretary of the Treasury from 10 March 1877 to 3 March 1881 (succeeding Lot M. Morrill and preceding William Windom), and Secretary of State from 6 March 1897 to 27 April 1898 (succeeding Richard Olney and preceding William R. Day).

Biography
John Sherman was born in Lancaster, Ohio in 1823, the brother of William Tecumseh Sherman. He entered politics as a Whig in Mansfield, and he was among the anti-slavery activists who formed the Republican Party. He served three terms in the US House of Representatives, and he traveled to Kansas to investigate the unrest between pro- and anti-slavery activists. In 1861, he was elevated to the US Senate, and he helped to redesign the country's monetary system, producing legislation that would restore the nation's credit abroad and produce a stable, gold-backed currency at home. He served as Secretary of the Treasury under Rutherford B. Hayes, and he oversaw an end to wartime inflationary measures and a return to gold-backed money. He wrote and debated laws on immigration, business competition law, and regulation of interstate commerce, and he authored the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. In 1897, he was appointed Secretary of State by President William McKinley, and he retired in 1898 at the start of the Spanish-American War due to failing health. He died in Washington DC in 1900.